Page 54 of Wedding Crasher

Emily dumped the detritus of her bag onto the desk, including the minty green spare pair of granny knickers she carried around at all times these days because some pregnancy know-it-all on TV told her she needed to.

‘And this has been sitting in your file, too. Should have been given to you a while back. Not sure what happened there.’ The receptionist dangled a brown envelope from her shell-pink fingertips, not willing to risk direct contact with anything connected to such a blatant jezebel. She shrugged and turned away to tap on her computer keyboard. ‘Sorry.’

Emily glowered at her. She didn’t look very sorry. She tucked the extra paperwork underneath her chin as she gave up on the phone and swept her belongings back into the Tardis. It was probably only some shonky salesman on the flip side of the globe trying to sell her something she didn’t need, anyway.

Outside, she made a dash for her Micra, barely noticing as she passed beneath a window cleaner’s ladder. She flung the offensive bag into the passenger side and hurled the brown envelope down on top of it. Back in the relative safety of her seat, she placed her hands in the ten to two position on the wheel and breathed out slowly. Back in again. Out again nice and easy, eyes closed as she tried to connect with her inner peace, or whatever it was the smug TV pregnancy guru insisted on at least twice a day for the baby’s wellbeing. Her eyes snapped open in surprise as someone rapped hard on the window. The whistling window cleaner, his chamois in one hand and something pale green in the other.

Oh, God. No. Just, no.

Emily inched the window down a fraction and squinted at him, her cheeks already fiery with humiliation.

‘You dropped yer knickers, darlin’.’

Evil git-bag. He was having a good old laugh at her expense.

‘Thank you,’ Emily squeaked. ‘Theyareclean.’

Ground, swallow me up.

She yanked them through the gap and whizzed the window up again as he sauntered away, shoulders still shaking with laughter.

The accuracy of his words, however, wasn’t wasted on her. How she wished she hadn’t dropped her knickers. She wouldn’t be in this mess now. The smug TV guru wouldn’t have been impressed by the way Emily thumped her forehead against the steering wheel and cursed like a navvy as she pulled out of the car park in tears.

Marla placed the outrageously large arrangement of crimson roses on the windowsill in her office, then changed her mind and moved them over onto the desk. Two seconds later she got up again and took them out of the office altogether, balancing them on the landing shelf. They’d be better off out there anyway; it was cooler, and she wouldn’t have to look at them all the time. She had to award Rupert a ten out of ten for effort over the last few weeks. He’d sent flowers. Three times. He’d rung and apologised. Daily. And just five minutes ago he’d emailed to let her know that he’d reserved a table at her favourite restaurant that evening. She grimaced and bit down so hard on the end of her pencil that shards of wood splintered into her mouth.

Try as she might, she just couldn’t untangle Rupert from Bluey’s death in her mind. Whenever she thought about him she got an uncomfortable sensation of dread in the pit of her stomach and had to think about something else. It would pass, she was sure. She’d go to dinner with him and get things back on track.

Gabe, on the other hand, had made himself conspicuous by his absence since the funeral, and boy was she glad. Shame made her hide her face in her hands whenever she thought about the way she’d flung herself at him on her doorstep.

She spat the shards of wooden pencil into the wastepaper bin and tried to will her way back into the easy groove she’d worn for herself before Gabriel had turned up and rucked his way through it rough-shod.

Cupcakes.

It would have all beensoperfect if it had only been a cupcake bakery.

Okay, so maybe they’d all have been letting out their belts a little by now, but her business would have been safe and her sanity would still be intact. Her rock-solid world seemed to have tipped on its axis, sand slipped under her feet whenever she tried to get a grip.

She rubbed the pale blue ribbon from Bluey’s funeral that she kept on her desk. Dora was continually tidying it away into the drawer, but Marla kept pulling it back out again like a child with their comfort blanket.

Darling Bluey. Her mind tracked back over the same painful loop every time she thought of him. If only she’d taken him home. If only she’d stopped Rupert from opening the chapel door in time. If only she’d managed to catch hold of his collar.

If only.

Sometimes, in the darkness of the middle of the night, she even managed to hang the blame on Gabe’s shoulders. Without him there would have been no need for a campaign, no public meetings, and she’d never have met Rupert. She didn’t dwell on the fact that the idea of life without Rupert stirred a distinct lack of emotion in her.

She focused instead on the fact that no Rupert would have meant no fireworks, and no fireworks would have meant that her beloved Bluey would still be here. And there she was again, full circle, Rupert and Bluey tied together in her head.

She wound the blue ribbon around her fingers, her eyes on the funeral parlour.

If it had been a cupcake bakery, she’d never have met Gabe. She didn’t dwell, either, on the fact that this was a much more disconcerting thought than having never met Rupert.

Much to her own annoyance, her mind insisted on road testing the idea of Gabe as a cupcake baker rather than an undertaker, and however hard she tried, she couldn’t get the image of Gabe, naked except for a cooking apron, out of her head for the rest of the afternoon.

Rupert did his best at dinner, he really did, and Marla was grateful, she really was.

He pulled out her chair, and he poured wine, and he switched plates with her when she wasn’t as keen on pigeon as he’d insisted that she would be.

In between their main course and dessert, he reached into his jacket pocket and handed her a gift-wrapped package.

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